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T O P I C R E V I E W

Tykeanaut

Apparently part of the Saturn V rocket on the Apollo 13 mission was scheduled to be aimed and crashed into the moon about 125-miles away from the Apollo 12 seisometer. I'm aware that lunar module ascent stages have done this, but this was to be the "big one."

Was this experiment achieved on any following mission?

SpaceAholic

S-IVB stages from Apollo's 13-17 impacted the lunar surface.

Headshot

The craters produced by these S-IVB impacts have all been located and positively identified. They can be viewed here on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera website.

What is also cool in those later Apollo images are the lunar tracks of the vehicles after landings — was just at Goddard Space Flight Center and they have some even more amazing images at the visitor center from the LRO on the Apollo landing sites if anyone is ever in that area.

Tykeanaut

From a nostalgia point of view I'd love to visit those impact and landing sites.

Blackarrow

You may get your wish (vicariously) if the lunar probe featured in last month's "Sky at Night" ever gets off the ground. I believe the target is the Apollo 17 landing-site. Mind you, I'll believe it when it happens. We've been hearing about these Lunar X Prize plans for many years. So far, nothing.

Robert Pearlman

I believe you are referring to PTScientists' ALINA lunar lander and Audi lunar quattro rovers.

They have withdrawn from the Google Lunar X Prize, preferring to fly when they are ready rather than to meet a contest deadline, but are still working toward a series of launches, the first still targeting Taurus Littrow.

There are also Moon Express and Astrobotic, as well as TeamIndus, which are still making progress toward lunar robotic missions.